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11/22/2018

Once again, I'm going to answer Raph Koster with a blog post rather than a post on Facebook, not only because of length, but because I've always found that the worst possible haters on earth are friends of friends.

On the one hand, if we allow networks to spread falsehoods or hatred without consequence, we create alternative realities that drown out facts with emotion. In this view, free speech falls prey to vulnerabilities from scale that were never anticipated, creating propagandistic universes that destroy society. The only solution is authority employing moderation techniques.

On the other hand, any authority that is handed power over moderation techniques in order to restrict speech that is damaging to the public fabric can inevitably become corrupted -- either in a pure government propaganda way, or even in more subtle ways, resulting in the creation of a different propagandistic universe. Therefore we need completely free speech so that suppression of opinions can never happen.

These feel like cases of choosing to hand over our thinking either to the moneyed or the government. Money wins in complete freedom; government wins in moderated scenarios.

If we want freedom, then we probably can't permit accumulation of money to provide the loudest voice. And if we want moderation, we have to design it in a way that doesn't permit those in authority to shape our opinions to reinforce their power.

Who's the "we" here, Raph? Let's start with that. Your friends and you in Silicon Valley? You didn't mean Congress, right? You meant perhaps platform providers? Or government? What kind of government? Who is to deliver this pious suppression of free speech for the greater good, no doubt delivered as a coded thing to run mainly automatically with key words? Will we get to elect them?

I read this article through twice to try to see where the "horror" was. Why? It's absolutely normal and is absolutely understandable as the environment that geeks from Silicon Valley created. That Internet environment spawned the Christopher Blairs of the world, cynical trolls with no or dead-end jobs and substandard homes who can make a living by the ad system created to provide just enough democratic access to lure people into thinking it's good. Such people naturally prey on older women like Shirley Chapian who but for just a few missing connections -- children and grandchildren? a church? a volunteer group? a bar? -- might have stayed closer to their original path of Europe and NOW. But the Internet is the same thing that killed those social connections even if it pretends to save some of them. Where's the horror? It's normal, natural and expected.

The place to rein in cynical geeks is in civic and corporate culture, not by suppression of the First Amendment but changing the nature of how the platform responsibility is viewed. This began with the disrespect of private property (copyright) that ended with disrespect of privacy -- and a hypocritical belief that encryption can't be used for the former but can for the latter, even to the point of keeping the FBI from accessing a terrorist's phone. It means an end to safe harbour. It means in the marketplace of services, Google decides that people with youtubes spawning falsity and hate can't have ads -- but lets them at least copy their uploaded videos before killing them off. Let another provider serve them if they want the possible legal liability, as non-moderation usually leads to extremism fairly quickly -- incitement of imminent action, not just general hatred; child pornography; assassination for hire. You know, like the Silk Road on Tor -- with Jacob Appelbaum. Like that.

What is the solution? Better housing? More church-going? More malls so that you don't have to drive 50 miles to them? Why even reach for moderation and the suppression of the First Amendment when it's about housing or jobs? Or at least, Ocasio-Cortez thinks it is and perhaps she's at least partly right. But where are the jobs? Did the robots take them? Or are they at Amazon? And why is that so terrible?

Shirly Chapian is absolutely right -- if she had kids, she should yank them from school -- because this is the result -- people like Christopher Blair, not fighters for ISIS. Schools only cater to the Internet and tech instead of challenging it.

I really don't understand your pieties, Raph. One thing I know for sure: the people who created this situation can hardly be the ones allowed to moderate with systems they code and rule, given what they think shouldn't be "alternative reality." Because the people who will delete idiocies about sharia law in America may well block any criticism of Islam for violation of the rights of women. They are not to be trusted with this ban hammer.

We "probably can't" allow the freedom of capitalism, i.e. freedom of the press belongs to him who owns one? Why? Who says? The gnomes of the Internet? We're to have Soviet-like uravnilovka (forced leveling)? By whom? So Amazon builds a success building from the Internet created by all your friends and neighbours, and everyone orders online from them, then we are to block them from opening new hubs in our cities? Why? Couldn't we have civic, religious and political institutions under the First Amendment instead? Oh, are those harder to do so you're rather have something coded and run by 20-somethings? But those harder things are required to make it possible for people to sort their way through the minefields created by the trolls and their innocent victims. Not "moderation" except for banning of speech that incites imminent violence.

Yes, it's a lot more hard work in real-time in organic life to make decent people. Ask your mom.

PS

Then this further interesting exchange:

Dorian OuerI have always said that the only thing worse than a stolid, lazy, dysfunctional government bureaucracy with monopoly levels of authority, is a ruthless, for profit, private company with monopoly levels of authority.

Raph KosterDorian Ouer at least we can build rights structures into governments. They can fail but people do cling to them fiercely. Can’t really do rights with private industry except via regulation.

Catherine Ann FitzpatrickWe already have a "rights structure" built into government, Raph, it's called "separation of powers" and involves Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, you know, that sort of thing. That you think there is some better coded thing that can be built instead of this is the real horror. Apparently you also don't fathom that the private industry you seem to loathe is a result of rights and that's a good thing, you wouldn't even be having this conversation without the private corporation Facebook, which all its faults.

Raph KosterCatherine Ann Fitzpatrick I really think you misread what I wrote. I know perfectly well we have a rights structure built into our governmental system. I also know it’s only as good as the government guaranteeing the rights is.

The concerns I listed in the post are that free speech is losing out to money and it is damaging us all; and we can’t moderate because it would infringe rights and be vulnerable to governments that go bad. The whole Constitution is carefully architected to prevent issues with government going bad.

Raph KosterFurther: I was specifically describing two opposing viewpoints both of which are failing us — not advocating for either one of the two.

1

Catherine Ann FitzpatrickRaph Koster But you said "we" -- as if there is this smart committee of people who will chart a path between these supposed extremes, even as you lean toward disdain for the free market and capitalism. Otherwise, you wouldn't write this, Raph: "If we w…See More

Dorian OuerI am genuinely baffled how you can be agreeing with him yet so strongly convinced that you're not.

Catherine Ann FitzpatrickRaph Koster Free speech isn't losing out to money, Raph, except in your worldview -- which is only that, your worldview. You believe, most likely, as many of your cohorts do, that Facebook's demand to know the funding of Freedom from Facebook is anti-semitic. You might have the patience to read a careful explanation as to why that isn't the case. https://www.tabletmag.com/.../the-truth-about-george-soros Which I can only endorse having worked for Soros or received Soros grants for most of my adult life.

And you might want to ask who the hell is Freedom from Facebook, anyway? Who are those guys? Moveon? Or who? Mitch Kapor? They don't tell you any names, there's no board, even the registration is cloaked. You have to dig around and find the hedge fund guy. But he's not the end of the story.

And good Lord, Raph, there are specific private industries "brainwashing" people?! Which ones? Facebook? Are you serious? If the lady sending out things about Sharia law went to church instead of doing that, you'd call her brainwashed, and if she volunteered for anything but Planned Parenthood, you might well call her brainwashed, too. Nobody can win in your world.

11/05/2018

If you live in New York City, be sure to turn your ballot over tomorrow and vote on three propositions. I recommend NO (Campaign finance limits), NO "Civic Engagement" Commission), YES (Term limits for community boards).

I particularly urge you to vote NO on Proposition 2, the so-called "Civic Engagement" proposition -- it's stealth socialism at its worst.

By using the term "Civic Engagement," the stealth socialists hope that people will simply think, 'Oh, that sounds nice, more involvement from the public, I'll vote for that". It's why I loathe stealth socialism -- they can never stand up and call themselves what they are, and stand for what they actually think, but they have to smuggle in their agenda in part, in order to ram it through in full later.

This particular proposition promotes another seemingly-innocuous concept called "Participatory Budgeting". It's also designed to lull the unsuspecting into thinking, "Oh, more involvement of people in spending public money." But again, that's crap.

Let me suggest there is a way you ALREADY have to "get involved" in spending public tax money. It's called DEMOCRACY and ELECTIONS. You elect people you trust who campaign on principles that you support and delegate them to spend funds because that is what modern liberal democracies do. They have delegation and division of labor, they don't pretend that you can mass-decide anything by "everybody" just "clicking". This is populism at its worst, and both extreme left and right love the concept -- because under the guise of "the public," small groups of determined cadres can take over.

What you get when you push through such methods is what I call "the tyranny of who shows up." Remember the student council in high school? Did you ever bother to follow what they were doing? Did you try to get elected? Or give up because you weren't one of the cool kids? That's how you lose your freedom.

"Participatory Budgeting" is a staple of every socialist party and group in the US and has long been a cult of these groups they have been trying to push through -- and now they're succeeding (it will likely pass due to lack of involvement and stupidity). Google it and you'll see. Yes, I understand what socialism means, no, I don't suffer from a false definition of it, and no, I don't suffer from "propaganda" and "fake news". Do you? Have you visited socialist countries of various types and lived in them, as I have? Did you go to the Socialist Scholars' Conferences in the 1980s, like me -- and Obama?

The "participators" are the "tyrants who show up" and even if any of us do, they show up already from cadres organizations with hidden agendas that we can find difficult to suppose -- especially if they wave the cards of "civility" or "the need to be positive" to suppress criticism.

Who wouldn't want to be involved in spending public money -- especially as a socialist? It's not your organization's, and you didn't vote for or support the people actually elected to do this because you're in a tiny, sectarian minority. You want to have, say, "Public Bikes" or "Bike Paths." This isn't something good just for its own sake, but smashes corporations and is good for dismantling capitalism. That New York already is overrun with Citibikes that aren't even used in many corners (ask me if you want documentation) and actually cost way more than their supporters let on doesn't matter. That bike paths already slow traffic and take away parking spots for people who use cars even if they are poor (or taxis) doesn't matter. That clean, safe public bathrooms would be a better call for spending this million is something that hipster socialists won't get -- they have the disposable income to spend on buying a slice of pecan pie in a diner to go to the bathroom -- unlike some of us, with two kids in a public park or on a fixed income. Socialists are often good at spending other people's money in fact because they have more of their own than others, as I've found.

"Participatory Budgeting" might be benign if it involved only advice, recommendations, and not actual spending of money. But it involves actual spending -- that's why they show up. It's often discretionary funds or open-ended pots of money that can get spent without too much attention. The socialists imagine they are stopping "corporate greed" or "political graft" or whatever by spending YOUR money. But that's insane, as New York City politics are very transparent and very criticized and very contested by the media of all types. But something like this falls below the radar.

I've found that if you try to criticize "Participatory Budgeting" or even just ask some pointed questions about its methods and means and full agenda, you are silenced, banned, muted, harassed on social media. That's how you know it's a socialist cult.

If you don't believe or don't understand anything I am telling you now, think of this: what do you know of "Participatory Budgeting"? Did you ever hear of it? Did you ever read a single article on it? *Is* there a single article that is balanced and critical about it, or can you only find pieces by its ardent supporters by Googling? Are even "critical" articles only advice on how to ram the concept through better in the face of skeptics, painting critics as supporters of corrupt oligarchs?

At the very least, then vote NO until you and others in the public can become more educated about what this REALLY means.

I don't have the capacity due to my personal circumstances to go and "participate" with these "participatory budgeters" to call them to account and flush them out for what they are -- although years of reading and debating about this have convinced me. Yes, it would be good to go to the actual meetings. But do you have that capacity? Does anybody? This is how you lose democracy -- by thinking that elected representatives are corrupt or stupid (the view of many Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley [NYC] hipsters) and that such "organized" little groups can "run it better". But they are ideological stealth raiders. Beth Novak, the socialist who got in the Obama White House tech office with these sorts of ideas, tried (and fortunately failed) to destroy the Patent Office with a form of this "community involvement."

Whenever I see the word "community" in NYC, I've learned to take a second look, because the cult "Working Families" or others may be involved. Democracy means all of us. Socialism means some of us as the "advance guard." Don't confuse it. Sooner or later in my experience, socialists suppress freedom of speech and freedom of association to keep themselves in power. That's why I oppose them.

If you don't want to hear it from me, hear it from The New York Times, which while leftist, isn't socialist in the main, and from Gale Brewer, a liberal, leftist politician whom I have supported on a number of issues who in fact questions the hard-left socialist mayor on this issue:

“The mayor already has control over the Department of City Planning; why should his appointees help select the community boards’ technical advisers for land-use decisions, too?” Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer argued in an op-ed in The Villager.

Indeed. What Brewer has ferreted out is that if DeBlasio has the power to pick these "community-involved" types who want to "participate," he will pick his friends, the socialists, and they will grab land decisions away from developers they think are "corrupt" and "oligarchic," regardless of the facts -- which even a leftist like Brewer, who is no corporate tool, questions.

The New York Times uses that argumentation as well:

The measure would create a commission, largely controlled by the mayor, whose exact powers would be unclear. It would add yet another layer of bureaucracy without good cause. And in taking up participatory budgeting, such a commission could tread on the authority of the City Council, which now oversees that process. In a city with ample mayoral influence already, it is best that the powers afforded to the Council — most notably land-use and budget oversight — be carefully guarded.

Some of the initiatives the commission would be tasked with overseeing are worthy, such as expanding translation services at poll sites. But it would be wiser to implement them through legislation in the City Council or existing city agencies instead. That would preserve the powers of the Council and prevent the addition of unnecessary bureaucracy, better serving New Yorkers.

The New York Times is at least enough of an institution itself to understand you don't dismantle a democratic institution like the City Council and its authorities lightly, handing them over to latte-drinking hipsters in bike-clipped pants and geometric haircuts who believe "we need to dismantle capitalism" -- except, of course, Google or Ben and Jerry's.

Brewer says term limits will "kill our first line of defense" against developers. But I don't agree with her on this point regarding the third proposition, where I recommend voting YES. The community boards are a total racket in New York City, with hard-core pols getting entrenched in ways that are unstoppable. Term limits helps break up those mafias and that's a good thing. Development is not all evil. Community boards opposed things like the Hi Line on the West Side which in fact have turned out to be wonderful.

Regarding "campaign finance," I advocate NO for lowering limits to $2000 in the socialistic belief that there will now be "a thousand schools of thought contending" with smaller contributions, "like Sanders" (a misunderstanding even of the socialist Sanders campaign -- these things are never decided by Mom and Pop sending in $5, but by socialist corporate hegemons like Ben and Jerry's). Brewer and the New York Times support that argumentation that "more small contributions" will be encouraged. This is baffling, because small contributions of $100 are made regardless of whether limits are $2000 or $5100, and that's not the way to encourage them -- it is disconnected.

10/14/2018

Facebook removed this post as "spam" -- I don't know whether it was merely because of its length (they could just give that simple answer, and so, so that's not it) or because it challenges their own received wisdom on Kavanaugh, who knows. So it goes here.

To summarize: this is a debate about due process and institutions such as Congress and the Supreme Court and nomination hearings, between two people who did not vote for Trump -- I voted for Hillary and I don't know who Raph voted for. We both have the same values but line up different pieces of evidence to support them, and these are at odds. My argument is basically that if you insist on these standards for "evidence" from Kavanaugh's treatment at the hands of the Democrats and liberal media, they could come for you next.

Raph cites as his chief piece of evidence in this round the accusation from James Roche, who is described as a doctor and room mate of Kavanaugh's at Yale. From just a few minutes of digging, however, you can find out that he is not a practicing physician but CEO of a multi-million dollar Silicon Valley company who made his millions from a company that sold customer responses to big corporations like Wal-Mart, and by his own admission, only socialized with Kavanaugh a few days, despite being his room mate.

So I go to work on him, using the same methods of association and circumstantial evidence that he -- and Raph -- want applied to Kavanaugh. In the end I ask if Raph, himself a denizen of Silicon Valley, could like Roche to be summoned to a Congressional hearing on customer data privacy on the Internet using the same standards that the Democrats think should have been used -- and were in part used -- on Kavanaugh.

Raph Koster: From that very Vox article: "But Kavanaugh swore to the Senate Judiciary Committee that not only was it impossible that he attended a party with Ford in which he blacked out from drinking, he’s never been that drunk in his life. “I’ve never blacked out,” he told the committee. He answered “no” to a series of questions from guest prosecutor Rachel Mitchell about whether he’d ever, for example, been told about something he did while drunk that he hadn’t remembered or woken up without knowing how he got there. (Mitchell quickly sidelined soon afterward.) And when asked by Senator Amy Klobuchar if he’d ever drank so much that he’d been unable to remember things, he retorted, “I don’t know. Have you?” (Kavanaugh apologized to Klobuchar later in the hearing.)

This is at odds with the accounts of some contemporaries — particularly some of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmates. James Roche, Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate, told the New Yorker that he remembers Kavanaugh “frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk.” Another college classmate, who’s now a doctor, told the Washington Post that “there’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. ... But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”"

> "Being president of the Keg Club isn't proof of being black-out drunk; being black-out drunk isn't proof of rape."

Ah, but I didn't claim it was proof of rape. You're arguing against something more extreme than what I am saying.

> "No, I don't conclude that a plausible outcome is that Kavanaugh would undo Roe v. Wade after he has stated that it is settled law"

Again, that's specifically NOT something I said. I said that the plausible outcome was his voting in favor of restrictions on clinics based on states' rights. We just had a lengthy discussion about whether that was a real issue. But that's all I said.

> "Yet this subject makes you return again and again, with vim and vigor. Unlike some of my friends, you've had children, not abortions. So what drives you? What imaginary loss of the institutionalization of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, before you were even born (! -- I was born in 1956) causes this energy? I marched against the Vietnam war when I was 14 and against the war in Iraq holding my small daughter's hand. Did you march against anything when you were 14 or ever? What causes your vehemence on this subject?"

I am not sure what subject you are referencing. I wasn't discussing anything related to abortion when I first showed up in this thread. Abortion didn't even come up until yesterday.

The kinds of things I marched against and wrote letters for and whatnot when I was young were against apartheid, for political prisoners of conscience, mostly with Amnesty International. I think I attended an anti-Iraq War thing as well during college.

The topic that I started with, and I think I have continued to return to throughout, was "we need to maintain due process." My initial post was "Of course, the answer to that would be to do a proper investigation, which didn’t happen. I suspect it *still* wouldn’t have found enough facts to prove anything but then at least we’d know that both presumption of innocence and due process had been upheld as principles. When presumption of innocence is used to dismiss even the need for an investigation, or to limit it unduly, we are left without confidence in the process."

In other words, the motive for my posting was fear for our institutions. That's what worries me these days. What I see is partisans actively destroying institutions, partisans letting members of their party -- their leaders -- get away with things that are corrupt or undemocratic because they are more invested in winning than the orderly functioning of the country.

It so happens that right now, most of those happen to be GOP, but that's because Trump himself is signally uninterested in democratic norms and because the GOP happens to be the party in power.

I don't think that concern over corruption should be a partisan issue. In fact, I would have hoped that conservatives would be prompt to the defense of basic principles. But I tend to get a lot of "Obama did it too!" when I talk about it.

My big gripe with Kavanaugh was the process. Literally, that. Oh, I don't like his politics in a bunch of ways, but I didn't like Gorsuch's much either and I didn't post anything at all about him. That's because the Gorsuch process went smoothly.

You say, “What I see is partisans actively destroying institutions, partisans letting members of their party -- their leaders -- get away with things that are corrupt or undemocratic because they are more invested in winning than the orderly functioning of the country.

But that’s exactly what happened when Democratic activists, many among the left wing of the party with indeed financial backing and already-existing press adulation, set out to sink Kavanaugh because they couldn’t come up with arguments proving that in fact he’d be against abortion rights. So I share your concerns, but with just the opposite set of facts that you think are merely good civic activities.

So no, Raph, the testimony you cite is not "at odds" with the statements of Kavanaugh. You don't like Kavanaugh -- he's Republican, he may be a secret abortion rights remover in your view, or maybe because he's a preppie, or even an Irish Catholic, and you know how they drink! So you're predisposed to *think* it's at odds. It is not.

There are four possibilities: 1) Ford has mixed up the identity of her assailant; 2) Kavanaugh was black-out drunk and doesn't remember it; 3) Kavanaugh wasn't black-out drunk but doesn't remember it anyway; 4) Kavanaugh was either black-out drunk or wasn't, but knows it did happen and is lying. It's this fourth option that many Democrats such as yourself think is true -- but you have no evidence whatsoever of this; no corroboration of Ford's story from anyone. So what you're trying to do is turn one of these *other* stories about his drinking into a corroboration -- to see if you can "catch him in a lie" or "corroborate her story" and not even to back up Ford – which you claim you aren’t doing – but only to indicate “his character” isn’t suitable for a justice. That’s what’s so sneaky about it. You know perfectly well that if there was no allegation from Ford at the height of the #MeToo movement, and the stories were only about his high school or college drinking with no sexual connotation, we would never have heard them. Absent a sexual abuse angle, these stories would only say more about the accusers than the accused and they wouldn’t risk them.

Kavanaugh’s statements under oath aren’t “at odds” -- the 4th option is the only one you're considering whereas any of the others could ALSO be true and be consistent with the friends' memories. For one obvious point, you can be "stumbling drunk" or "incoherent" but NOT "black-out drunk," which means not passing out, but not remembering what you did while drunk. These friends could remember that Kavanaugh was "stumbling drunk" -- which may or may not be true -- but a) that wouldn't mean he was black-out drunk b) and even so, it wouldn't mean that he's an assailant. It's your refusal to understand all the possibilities with these hysterical hypotheticals that is so troubling. You seem to think that if a friend remembers him as "stumbling drunk", THEREFORE he is a) blacking out b) has committed a rape attempt [which you claim not to be assessing, but it is implied]. But neither a) or b) follows definitely -- it's ONLY SPECULATION. "Becoming incoherently drunk" is way more common than "blacking out" -- and committing assault is even less rare than blacking out. They aren't welded couplets.

Kavanaugh's retort to Klobuchar is rude, but understandable, given the hostile situation in which he was placed. It's not relevant whether she was ever blackout drunk, but then what did she expect as an answer? The very definition of "black-out drunk" is that you don't remember. So if the answer is "yes," it would go with a situation where "everybody else" told him he was blackout drunk, not that he "remembered that he was blackout drunk". And again, if he admitted such a thing, it would only strengthen the innuendo of hostile Democrats, not constitute proof of assault.

Having the guest prosecutor there was a gambit designed to avoid the optics of mean white old Republicans questioning a delicate Democrat victim of sexual assault, but it's odd, given that we've been told a million times that this is not a criminal investigation but a "job interview". How many job interviews have guest prosecutors?

This college classmate was not called as a medical witness, nor was any medical witness called in this non-criminal trial (just as Ford was not called as a scientific expert on memory, and no one was). So it's only his opinion. He admits that "there is no medical way I can say he was blacked out". That's good, because it would be malpractice for him to make a diagnosis over the Internet over something that was alleged to have happened 36 years ago with a person he admits he saw infrequently. That's helpful for you to realize, since you cite him, that there is no lock-step way in which you can claim that "incoherence=black-out". But for him to then say "it's not credible for him to say that he has no memory lapses" is merely his opinion -- and one that his previous statement said to avoid legal/professional problems undermines. Yes, it is credible. Because he may have drank to excess -- which he admits -- yet not blacked out. And certainly not committed rape.

>Ah, but I didn't claim it was proof of rape. You're arguing against something more extreme than what I am saying.

In a climate where the whole purpose of drilling down on his drinking was to link it to an assault, this is pretty disingenuous. So what you're saying is that you want to gather all these "witnesses" about his "black-outs" but merely for "character" purposes, not to prove rape. Except, they aren't character witnesses given that these events happened in high school and college. If you think people should be denied a political position based on what they did in high school or college, say so. I don't, because there is no evidence of any serious crime. And more to the point, they aren't a) any circumstantial evidence of a rape attempt b) not relevant to examining his character now, as he has been a judge for the last 30 years and not to our knowledge had any episodes of drunk driving, or bad behavior while drunk, or even any anecdotal tales of his drinking to excess now. So that's why I'm not for admitting it as "evidence" in this "job interview" as it does not describe his 30 years as a judge -- which is what matters -- and the background of his private life as an adult while serving as clerks or judges -- which is what is relevant now.

James Roche, Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate, is complaining that "the FBI never contacted him." And? The FBI doesn't contact all your room mates from college or anywhere, and even in the extended background check granted, it's quite reasonable to assume that if such room mate has already told what he knows to the Washington Post, there isn't much to get there. (Again, there's this assumption that the FBI works magic).

James Roche said in his statement, "Brett and I did not socialize beyond the first few days of freshman year" a fact you can glean only if you click through to read his actual statement. Why is someone who didn't socialize "beyond a few days" and only occasionally spoke to his room mate at night (it's like the room mate in "I am Charlotte Simmons") a credible witness?

Making a claim that someone "lied under oath" as Roches does about Kavanaugh is a very serious matter. I'll bet if he were a lawyer, he would risk doing that. Roche also said he believed Kavanaugh's other accuser, Ramirez, who was a "good friend" of his by his own admission. But her story is pretty flimsy, even by the standards of the liberal press. And evidently while at these same Yale parties, Roche himself was never "black-out" drunk and of course has a pristine memory, right?

But I don't believe that a doctor speculating on the meaning of someone's drinking -- after his own caveats -- is anything that can be used against Kavanaugh. Furthermore, I’m happy to use the same association on Roche as he used on Kavanaugh. Roche is " CEO of Helix Re, a San Mateo-based software company spun out of the Google X project." It's also described as providing “advanced technology solutions” for real estate owners, operators and tenants." Likely he is a Democrat, and could be a contributor to Democrats. The same kind of hysterical speculation could be started about him as he has indulged in about Kavanaugh.

Crunchbase has more that explains that like all Internet millionaires, these brothers got their start scraping data (and likely that is still the core function of that "advanced technology" for selling real estate).

"Jamie and Matthew Roche are the Co-CEOs of BO.LT. Over 15 years, the two brothers have created three successful startups. Their most recent company, Offermatica, defined the category of online testing and targeting and is now the Adobe Test and Target platform, which serves billions of impressions per week.

Prior to Offermatica, the two advised and built solutions for many of the most powerful companies in the world including Wal*Mart, Intuit, Intel, CNET, Nike and many others. James and Matthew have spent their careers focused on removing the barriers that separate marketers from their audience."

I raise this to explain that I can only be profoundly cynical about James Roche. No, his tech career is not relevant to a rape charge about a Supreme Court nominee but neither are his memories of 30 plus years vintage relevant. But his status as a tech millionaire may be relevant to his character. He's a rich, Yale-educated, successful start-up seller (he got $65 million for selling his company which "helps companies analyze their customers' online behavior to boost revenue", i.e. for personal data scraping operations -- who naturally has his own press spokesman -- and who evidently wants to influence politics from Silicon Valley -- as you do. Let's not pretend he's a mere concerned country doctor. Let's not pretend he's an innocent actor in general -- he's the kind of liberal who can get away selling to Wal-Mart despite all the hatred it generates on the left because no one will bother to look. He's the kind of data-scraper like Obama who first scraped all our data from Facebook to win the elections, then privatized his Organizing for America to a non-profit group where now the data is not accessible, who did this long before Cambridge Analytica, and will never have the scrutiny they did.

Shall I keep going? I raise the details of his biography to illustrate that two can play at this game -- he dredges up details of Kavanaugh's biography that may or may not be true from more than 30 years ago and which have no bearing on his activity as a judge, i.e. he cites no court decisions or legal theory or action. Meanwhile he himself from all indications has had 30 years of scraping data for profit. Which is the more despicable human being, if you want to get into biographical details?

He says in his statement that he has "no political agenda" and he merely thinks Ramirez, his friend, has a right to be heard. Can we probe some more on what it means for him to be the friend of Ramirez, given her self-reporting – and does he still socialize with her today? I simply don't believe him -- chances are strong that he votes Democrat, gives to candidates, hates Trump, is pro-abortion and all the rest, and this all came together in his sense of "civic duty" which is really a form of vanity. What was especially precious is his refusal to provide any more information -- "that's all I'm comfortable sharing" and refusal to grant any press interviews. That lets me know it's bullshit. You may feel that he could give confidential information in an FBI interview and that it's the fault of Congress or the White House for not allowing the FBI free range as long as they wish, but he can comfortably hide behind that forever -- which is why I think it's bullshit.

Ramirez is a woman who by her own admission was drunk to the point of having only a patchy memory of this incident in which she claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself after a dildo game. Why is that credible? It would never be coming from a Democrat against a Republican.

>Again, that's specifically NOT something I said. I said that the plausible outcome was his voting in favor of restrictions on clinics based on states' rights.

But you don't have evidence of that, either. A Supreme Court justice isn't going to determine a state's restrictions; a state would. It's a red herring. Because quite frankly, states *do* have right to determine matters of health, welfare, and education, not to mention other rights, and thank God for it, that's what makes America not-Russia. If Missouri or Kentucky wants to place restrictions on abortion, they have the democratic majority to do so, and if you want an abortion in the third-trimester, because you can't manage to get it together to have one before that, then you will have to cross a state line.

>When presumption of innocence is used to dismiss even the need for an investigation, or to limit it unduly, we are left without confidence in the process.

But presumption of innocence is just that. It's supposed to give way to the speculation of a Silicon Valley doctor who makes charges about something 34 years ago about a man he didn't socialize beyond a few days? It's supposed to give way to a woman drunk and on the floor at a dildo game who admits her memory is patchy? It's supposed to give way even to a person like Ford who appears credible but who can't remember the time, or the place, or the manner in her story? Why? Presumption of innocence is just that. You might counter that for all we know, Roche never violated customer privacy in any of his start-ups; we don't know that he did, only that it is likely given the nature of his companies and what they offered. Then you can concede that Kavanaugh never had a black-out.

You are imagining you are championing due process in this debate but what you are championing is hearsay, innuendo, cultural beliefs, and at best circumstantial evidence that doesn't prove anything. I think due process has to be about at the very least, journalistic facts, if not "beyond a reasonable doubt" which isn't the standard for a nomination hearing. Raph, would you like the standards that you think should apply to Kavanaugh be used in a Congressional hearing about customer privacy on the Internet to which Roche is subpoenaed?

Judging from all the Democratic activists email I get calling for "revenge" and spreading cartoons of the Supreme Court of Kavanaugh in a funny frat cap and all the rest, and judging from the kind of powerful individuals who have indeed lined up and do indeed have the cash for running these campaigns as Kavanaugh complained, and as I know from having worked at Soros or received grants from Soros from most of my adult life, if they really think perjury has been committed and a great wrong has occurred, they will chase down every story, find every fact, launch every lawsuit for incompetence, get every ABA ruling, do everything possible they can to discredit Kavanaugh. Watch them. It didn't work on Clinton (when it was the GOP versus Clinton) or on Thomas (when the Democrats warred on him as they did on Bork). Good luck!

If at first some people might have been inclined to think that women coming forward with stories 30 years after the fact are just after a celebrity's money, today -- and not only with #MeToo in general but the testimonies around Cosby's case in particular -- that's impossible to claim now.

Now that there is a conviction even after a mistrial. That LA Times link will show you that even as Cosby racked up success after success throughout his career of decades, he was still insecure enough -- evil enough? -- to have to drug and rape women when he could have likely got them without force.

Read the timeline, and none of Cosby's achievements will ever seem the same to you.

So the question is: are Bill Cosby's routines or sit-coms still funny? He even had a comedy routine based on the hypothetical story of using "Spanish Fly" to seduce women. And many of the women in the lawsuits are white women -- is that the issue? Reading that time-line will make you sick and it should likely make it not possible for you to ever find Cosby funny again.

Cosby was liked by many for his critique of the dysfunctionality of some blacks that whites didn't feel they could properly say themselves. There was his famous speech dubbed "the Pound Cake speech" in which he said blacks should stop blaming discrimination for their problems and look at poor parenting:

"These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged, 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else. And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if you get caught with it you're going to embarrass your mother. Not you're going to get your butt kicked. No. You're going to embarrass your mother. You're going to embarrass your family."

But a young black comedian wasn't buying any of this, as you can see from the LA Times timeline:

Hannibal Buress, during a stand-up performance in Philadelphia that goes viral, renews the allegations against Cosby in a sketch about what he saw as Cosby's hypocritical crusade against hip-hop culture and the unraveling of the black family. Cosby had made a speech at the NAACP's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education segregation case. “Bill Cosby has the ... smuggest old black man public persona that I hate," Buress says. "He gets on TV: 'Pull your pants up, black people, I was on TV in the '80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.' Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches. ... I guess I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch 'Cosby Show' reruns.” Within weeks, both Netflix and NBC had scrapped projects with Cosby, stand-up performances were canceled around the country, and TV Land pulled "The Cosby Show" from its lineup.

I remember very distinctly when Cosby's second record, "I Started Out as a Child" came out in 1964. I was 8 and my brother was 6. We must have listened to this record a hundred times and we thought it was hilarious. It was a time when there was no Internet of course, our television was very limited in our house, but radio and records could always be played. Comedy records were very popular at the time. We had the routines memorized down pat, and I can still remember Cosby's jokes even today. "Stop on a dime, give ya nine cents change."

For some reason, when I think of listening to these albums, I picture a dark room and my brother in a crib. But it must have been some other record because at age 6, even being sickly as a young child as an RH baby, and even with my parents not getting us new beds until we moved out of our house in Niagara Falls, he wouldn't have likely been in a crib at that age.

In any event, I can still picture a darkened room with the two of us listening to the routine about the "Giant" -- Cosby's father, coming home drunk and going to bed. He wasn't a rowdy drunk, but a sentimental drunk. He came home and stumbled around and hummed a tune. I can still remember my little brother imitating him perfectly, drawling "Hello, my dear..." and then the CHINK of the father's pants falling on the floor, and the little kids (in Cosby's routine) saying "The giant...has change!" We didn't have a father like this, but a grandfather like this. And we didn't have to steal his change because he gave us a quarter for "Sunday candy" -- but only after church.

I always thought these earlier albums were a lot funnier than any of the sit-coms he was in -- which I didn't watch, finding them contrived, like a lot of sit-coms.

I don't think at that age and time (1964) we had any black friends or even knew any black people. That's how it was in the 1960s. So that's why Bill Cosby's record seemed more about "urban" or "poor" or "childhood" than "black," perhaps. We lived in a working-class neighborhood in Niagara Falls and my father worked at a big plant as an engineer. Then when we moved south but still in upstate New York, we started out in a shack on a farm while we looked for something better and my father worked at another chemical plant. My main memory of that time, other than the huge sandbox we got to play in which was actually part of the chicken set-up, was having German Measles and being very, very sick, being kept in the dark, along with my brother, who was sick as well, and losing some hearing in one ear.

Likely the first black children I met was in Girl Scout camp around that time, and I remember one girl got into a fight with me seemingly for no reason and scratched me. I remember the counselors said to me that the girl was underprivileged and I simply had to be sympathetic. That was the form the lessons of desegregation came in. We didn't meet any blacks or have any black guests at our house until later in the 1960s when we moved closer to the bigger city of Rochester, where my mother taught in the inner city, something that she felt she should do (leaving a private Catholic school where our tuition was free) after the riots in Rochester in those years.

Maybe that lack of association affected how we saw that early album of Cosby's -- not as being about "blackness" but about being poor -- and certainly we weren't as poor as he and his family must have been. Even so, his routine on shoes, and how there weren't sneakers, but shoes with rubber soles, and how the shoes were repaired and made to last was something we were familiar with. We had Buster Brown shoes -- "I'm Buster Brown, look for me in your shoe!" and people went to shoe repair shops more then. Keds, with their special decoder rings, were something we got when we moved from Niagara Falls to what was actually a much more poor town in those years, Penn Yan. We moved a lot in those years for my father's different jobs and I remember each time we were told that we would get something when we moved, to make us less sad and distressed about yet another wrench -- toys, sneakers, a colour TV, even, and even a dog (before that we only had a stray cat we adopted).

Actually, it seems Bill Cosby had something to do with making sneakers popular, but I don't remember this. Rubber was rationed during World War II and into the 1950s so sneakers were not mass produced, until TV made them popular with figures like James Dean:

Sneakers became footnotes in the history of the Civil Rights movement. In 1965, I Spy was the first weekly TV drama to feature a black actor—Bill Cosby—in a lead role. His character, a fun-loving CIA agent going undercover as a tennis coach, habitually wore white Adidas sneakers, easily identifiable by their prominent trio of stripes. This updated gumshoe alluded to the “sneaky” origins of sneakers, while also serving as shorthand for new-school cool

A lot has changed in the 54 years since then -- and now there's this awful case. And I have to say, the routine isn't funny any more, at least for me, and I can't bring myself to listen to it although I suppose it still survives in the form of a sound track to a fond childhood memory. Now I think I'd be mining it for clues to Cosby's later criminal behavior (or maybe it had even started then).

I did listen to some of this, which is Cosby's reflections on that album, which he wrote while attending Temple University, which went into the Hall of Fame. Apparently it's still there.

This is difference, however, as there are numerous testimonies and a sentence from a court of law for Cosby -- not to mention the condemnation in the court of public opinion in the press. So now this legacy of art only becomes something to be mined to explain why the man became a criminal despite all his scolding of black criminals.

Had none of this ever happened -- or never come to light or been prosecuted -- it might be that someone might say of Cosby's legacy with those early albums that they were an introduction for whites at that time that enabled them to see blacks as more familiar and normal, like themselves, and not through the prism of stereotypes and the news of urban riots. But now that's gone forever and will be forever challenged.

The story is in the Combating Terrorism Center's publication at West Point.

Abstract: Between 2006 and 2012, two men working on opposite sides of the struggle between global jihadis and the United States faced off in New York City. One was the founder of Revolution Muslim, a group which proselytized—online and on New York streets—on behalf of al-Qa`ida. The other led efforts to track the terrorist threat facing the city. Here, they tell the inside story of the rise of Revolution Muslim and how the NYPD, by using undercover officers and other methods, put the most dangerous homegrown jihadi support group to emerge on U.S. soil since 9/11 out of business. As the Islamic State adjusts to its loss of territory, this case study provides lessons for current and future counterterrorism investigations.

It's really worth reading in full. There's an interesting part about how specially-trained agents -- who are trained in isolation from the NYPD so they can't be traced to it -- infiltrated the terrorist group. There's reference to the careful compliance with the Handschu agreement from 1971 which is about trial of violent political groups, with the precedent set by the Black Panthers' case. The Black Panthers are indeed violent in ideology and deed, but due process is due process.

It seems the NYPD accomplished a very important mission here, putting a terrorist group out of business and trying the mastermind Younus Abdullah Muhammad, even extraditing him from Morocco. That might not have been possible if he had been located in a more strict Islamist state with more animosity to the US, although the article doesn't mention that.

The lawsuit appeared merited in some ways because it involved activity like this, as the New Yorker explained:

The police also paid attention to Muslim student groups, the lawsuit said, infiltrating several in New York City, with one detective attending a whitewater-rafting trip organized by members of the Muslim Student Association at the City College of New York, and reporting what they talked about and how many times they prayed. One man, who said that he had been paid up to $1,500 a month to work as a police informant, declared in a sworn statement that he had provided the police with phone numbers from a sign-up sheet listing people who attended Islamic instruction classes, and had been told to spy on a lecture at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, even though the police did not believe the Muslim student group there was doing anything wrong. The man, Shamiur Rahman, also said that he was told to use a strategy called “create and capture."

“I was to pretend to be a devout Muslim and start an inflammatory conversation about jihad or terrorism and then capture the response to send to the NYPD,” he said in a legal filing, later adding: “I never saw anyone I spied on do anything illegal, not even littering.”

So that wasn't like the activity described in the West Point article:

The disruption and destruction of the Revolution Muslim terror network was of critical importance. Through its violent ideology and prowess in radicalization and recruitment in the West, the network was connected to almost 20 American and British terrorists, with plots that included a September 2011 attempt to fly a remote-controlled plane strapped with explosives into the Pentagon, a March 2010 plot to kill a Swedish cartoonistﾊwho satirized the Prophet Muhammad by Colleen LaRose (aka Jihad Jane), the May 2010 stabbing of a British member of Parliament, a Christmas bomb plot in 2010 against the London Stock Exchange, the January 2009 targeting of the Chabad-Lubuvitch headquarters in Brooklyn, death threats against the creators of South Park in April 2010, and a November 2011 lone-actor bomb plot in New York City.4 One member of the Revolution Muslim network was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, where he had joined al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Several attempted to leave the United States to fight for al-Qa`ida Core and al-Shabaab between 2007 and 2011, and some joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during 2013 and 2014.5 All in all, there were at least 15 plots, arrests, or kinetic military actions related to members of the Revolution Muslim network worldwide.6

I guess the wisdom is to know the difference, but how much observation of the seemingly more benign activity is required, at what level, with what signals and justifications, to stay within not only Handschu but the terms of this latest lawsuit?

I just don't know.

When you see the complexities and the long-term nature of this effort, it's hard to know how the NYPD or any police department can wend their way through this:

The NYPD Intelligence Division’s effort to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy the Revolution Muslim network and radicalization hub was multi-faceted and required a sustained effort over more than six years. It is useful to examine this effort by breaking it down into five different phases: 1) Identification phase—detecting the threat/network; 2) Investigation and Penetration phase—beginning the investigation; 3) Intelligence Collection and Analysis phase—understanding the threat; 4) Crushing the Network phase—arresting and prosecuting; and 5) Loose Ends phase—pursuing members on the periphery of the network who later activated. At a time when some believe the Islamic State appears to be morphing into a virtual caliphate, it is the authors’ hope that this analysis provides lessons for future counterterrorism efforts.

And yet that's what they and other law-enforcement bodies have to do to protect civilians so that their human rights are saved, too.

The Internet is a contested space -- all kinds of forces want to rule it. Governments both liberal and authoritarian. Non-governmental organizations. Platform providers like Google and Facebook, leasers of server space like Amazon. Anarchist hackers' movements like Anonymous. Scientists, academics.

In which I return to the land of my great grandfather for the first time to cover the Dublin OSCE Conference on Internet Freedom. Except it's not an official OSCE meeting, it's a conference convened by Ireland, currently the chair-in-office, as a kind of briefing, as delegations (well, "one delegation") could not agree on the agenda.

OSCE is the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a consensus-based multilateral organization with 56 members from Europe, Eurasia, and North America. Ireland has been active in promoting media freedom and welcoming discussion on Internet governance.

In Dublin, you feel as if the very cobblestones could talk. And they do. Tour groups continuously walked through the courtyard, and a tour guide reminded us that under oppressive British rule, Catholics could not practice their faith.

But in our New World Order of 21st Century Diplomacy, he had as much status at this conference as any script kiddie on the Twitter feed for #dcif, the hash tag or search term for "Dublin Conference on Internet Freedom". The running Twitter feed was also broadcast on to a big screen in the next conference session. Here's one twitterati complaining about another speaker:

Here's one of the Russian diplomats trying to read the old analogue way -- and calling for endorsement of the awful "International Code of Conduct for Information Security" promoted by the worst cyberattackers in the world -- Russia and China -- and currently being debated at the UN General Assembly

DAS Tom Melia led the US delegation to this non-meeting, and stressed the importance of sticking to the fundamentals of freedom of expression, a resolution the US sponsored with 24 other co-signers, but which was not discussed at this meeting due to lack of support even from Ireland. Melia also flagged the danger to Internet freedom caused by hackers, a subject brought up by only the Belarusian and other NGOs from Eastern Europe, where hackers are often supported by intelligence services.

Rebecca MacKinnon moderated the opening session and claimed that Apple had censored Ulysses. What she meant is that the Apple app store removed a *graphics comic book adaptation of Ulysses* which contained frames with pictures of nude men. Apple has a policy against nudity and removed the whole app -- their policy is based on their right to freedom of association and expression to create an acceptable public environment. This led to an outcry by users concerned this was net-nannying overreach and which ultimately led to restoration of the app. In fact, Internet freedoms triumphed all around, balance was found, and no international norms needed to be harmed in the process.

"This is one of the three young women of the punk group "Pussy Riot," two of whom are mothers of small children, who sang an anti-Putin song in a church in February. They've been in jail ever since, and still are. What do we do about this? What can we do about this? What do we do about this?" -Maximum Rocknroll The terrible risks activists are forced to take every time they fight for our rights and a better world! Shame on our governments!

Dmitry Kabak of Kyrgyzstan was one of the bloggers and tweeters who came to the conference trying to get attention to the severe obstruction of the Internet by Central Asian states. It was hard to be heard over the din of others flogging the copyleftist line.

Famous copyleftist Canadian author and activist Cory Doctorow was among those making wild claims -- if he were talking about Russia or Uzbekistan, it might make sense, but he's obsessed with what *Western* governments *might* do -- and haven't done because legislation never passes.

The tweet that had the most impact on many people came from Emin Milli, an Azerbaijani blogger and youth activist who was outspoken against Azerbaijan's policies throughout the meeting. Indeed, his tweet summarized the terrible disbalance between activists fighting literally not to be killed or jailed, and those worried how a legitimate piracy prosecution might "chill" their Internet consumption.

But the reality is that Azerbaijan is a place where beatings and jailings of bloggers are all too common, and in fact 5 journalists have been killed for their work with impunity, including by an Islamic fundamentalist.

The information that a Texas company hosted Ismayliova's blackmail tape is useful, but ultimately Texas servers aren't the problem, the oppressive Azerbaijani regime is the problem which should be tackled by states and NGOs directly.

And the tweet that stayed on stop for #dcif searches due to Twitter algorithms (i.e. most re-tweets) was one by an Icelandic activist quoting WikiLeaks supporter Birgitta Jonsdottir, who spoke on the conference panel implying she was a victim of US Dept. of Justice overreach, without explaining that she supported the hacking of a democratic state's classified files.

There was little appreciation for the realities of where the real bulk of the attacks come from -- "Eastern Europe" -- Dr. Shea said 70% of all cyberattacks in the OSCE zone come from "Eastern Europe":

At the closing session, Robert Guerra of Citizen's Lab used his prerogative as the conference rapporteur to skew the "take-homes" to be mainly about the alleged dangers to free speech from Western governments pursuing copyright prosecution or protection against cyber-attacks, although if you look at the very end I was able to do an intervention on the need for the rule of law rather than code-as-law.

Take a look at his Thursday blog on Snowden's TV question to Putin to establish several things typical of MacKey's blogs -- they are long, you have to scroll down through all the tweets and videos and links in them; they include some alternative voices, even though it's clear he shares the Times's general support and enthusiasm for Snowden; and he updates it throughout the day -- in this case, the last date stamp is at 5:11 pm. That anyone would question the nature of MacKey's blogs -- including MacKey himself! -- seems preposterous on the face of it, given that they are obviously a) always long b) always updated throughout the day and the last date stamp is shown; c) and *do* include on occasion alternative views.

To be sure, looking through all his entries, sure, you'll find short blogs, say on Iran, that date stamp in the early afternoon and aren't updated. But the center of gravity here is long, scrolling, liveblog style commentary on topics, updated regularly throughout the date. So let's see how this story developed and what happened ultimately to cut off debate.

Right away, after tweeting his NYT colleagues' news about the call-in show, MacKey establishes that he is capable of absorbing and retweeting a critical comment about the obvious thing to say about Snowden's disingenuous question: SORM (the FSB's system for monitoring communications).

MacKey retweets a critical comment from Appelbaum which essentially acknowledges the issue at play here: this is a propaganda stunt. Yeah, we get it that "RT does not equal endorsement" but everyone knows that RTs really are usually about signalling at least *validation* of a perspective if not *agreement*.

For those following RT.com's Ivor Crotty, an inveterate Kremlin apologist, this is a funny interchange, also showing MacKey's proper journalistic skepticism to this propaganda stunt -- OF COURSE Snowden's question had to be selected and approved and did not appear spontaneously when it involved the president of Russia! Croty feigns surprise.

Interestingly, MacKey later RTs Soldatov, because Soldatov now has suddenly appeared to offer a way out for all those Snowden supporters made easy by Snowden's cooptation -- why, it's "starting a national conversation" (remember how much that phrase was manipulated in our own country?). There is no doubt in my mind that MacKey shares Soldatov's take on this -- because of his next blog after the Guardian piece. I believe it's because it helped him rescue the hero Snowden out of the critique that even MacKey had to give Snowden in the first piece.

Here MacKey RT's his own piece about the Snowden/Putin show, and CC's the critics in the piece, Myroslav Petsa, the Ukrainian journalist who aptly asked -- why doesn't Snowden ask about Durov?! -- and Anne Applebaum, who dubbed it a propaganda show.

But the next day, MacKey starts a new blog, because now he sees that Snowden is "defending his part in Putin forum" at the Guardian. This is in keeping with an established pattern of the NYT on *every single* Snowden criticism that is ever covered in their newspaper, i.e. with the stories on the CIA in Geneva. They rush to get the "other side" from Snowden or his "lawyers" or supporters because they are uneasy with the criticism. This isn't just good news reporting, or they'd put that balance of *criticism* every time they run a glowing piece about Snowden including directly from Snowden himself. But it works in the other direction -- any time they are forced to cover criticism of Snowden, they rush to cancel it out with Snowden's own spin which really seem incredible.

Jeremy Duns, a well-known British author who publishes spy novels, and who had hitherto been among the most eloquent critics of Snowden, much in the vein of British journalist Edward Snowden, now had turned around and taken Snowden's Guardian op-ed piece at face value - and Soldatov's claim that it could be rescued from its dubious propaganda stunt status by claiming it "started a debate about Russian surveillance."

This pleasant tweet lets us know just how much MacKey loved this rescue effort for Snowden and also how he indicated that *he was continuing to follow the story* and that Duns' many other comments would be used in some other format, perhaps an article, or another blog.

When I saw that MacKey's blog on this second Snowden propaganda story -- his oped piece in the Guardian - was short and had NO dissenting voices, I cried foul. I pointed out that it was annoyingly one sided, and urged others in this debate to take part by leaving a comment at the NYT comments section under this article -- which I did, and it was published.

Duns believed understandably that the NYT article was posted before his debate with Tom Nichols. But as we can see from the date stamps in a Storyful provided by @StormJL, Tom Nichols first answered Jeremy only 20 minutes or so after his last tweet. Duns' last tweet cited by MacKey in the NYT blog is 3:42 pm on 18 April; MacKey's own date stamp (not update time stamp, but filing time stamp) is *4:52*. If we're going to play factology, let's play it all the way. To be sure, he had to take some time to write up the post, even if it consisted half of embeds of tweets. But even so, he simply missed -- or chose not to include -- the following deluge of tweets criticizing Duns. StormJL captures the debate where Jeremy's first tweet is 3:47 pm, and Tom Nichols replys at 4:00 pm. MacKey didn't close his story until *4:52* -- again, if we're going to play factology. Of course, when you're in another window writing and posting your story, you're not watching Twitter unless you happen to have TweetDeck running a ticker on your desktop. But let's assume MacKey just didn't go back to look at Twitter. That's likely what happend.

Even so, given that there was a DELUGE of Tweets questioning Jeremy, beginning immediately and continuing even today, from dozens of people, you have to ask: why didn't MacKey notice? Why didn't he care? My hypothesis is because he was satisfied with the way Snowden's rep was rescued, he thought he had covered it with enough "thoughtful insights" for the day, and he didn't need to think further about the hugely problematic issues brought forward by this highly manipulated active measure by Putin.

Jeremy complained that my objection wasn't fair, because MacKey's piece was posted before his discussion. But as I've illustrated, it was in fact posted an hour after Jeremy's debate began -- which isn't very long, and as I said, I allow certainly for a journalist to cease watching Twitter and writing up his story. But even so, in the genre of a liveblog that does not have to close, can always be updated, and can always add one more, with just a new update stamp, this was unfair, in my view.

I stated the OBVIOUS about MacKey's blog -- it updates throughout the day -- as it did on the first Snowden story. This one got cut off fairly early, and with no awareness of the DELUGE of complaints against Duns from what used to be his fellow critics of Snowden.

Sigh. I made no such claim that it was a "conspiracy". I made the claim that *it had happened, and wasn't consistent with his past behaviour, why, even yesterday on a similar Snowden story!

I make the statement that he has closed the story because of his own "progressive" position -- relieved at the rescuing of Snowden from total disaster -- and I stand by that. Even Luhn of the Nation and others were beginning to say "uh-oh" about Snowden, but along came Duns and Soldatov -- credible critics of the FSB and Snowden - to say, oh, it's not as bad as it looks. MacKey jumped on it.

And this is the exasperating response we can always expect from the scientist "progressives". Accusation that a critic of their bias is "lying" instead of arguing on substance. He can't acknowledge that he usually frequently updates during the day?! That this time he didn't?! He can't *take in the fact* that a huge debate about Duns had broken out while he wasn't looking -- because it was settled for him and he didn't look further? That's what this is about. It's not about me being "factually incorrect" as I've said nothing factually wrong.

So instead of saying "I didn't see that" or "thanks for pointing me to it, I'll take a look" (which is a polite kiss-off and absolutely doesn't obligate him to publish any more viewspoints) he decides to belligerently push forward with the "progressive "factology" position that always so exasperates (and deliberately so) their interlocutors. Um, yeah, there is a factological statement to be made that sure, *some* of MacKey's blogs aren't update, cut off at 1:00 pm, and never get revisisted, i.e. on Iran recently. But it's absurd to claim that's the norm. The norms is MOST are long and ARE UPDATED.

He then embellishes his scientism and "factology" with an outright misrepresentation of my perspective. I've never said anything remotely like "he should follow everyone on Twitter" and I haven't accused him of "omitting views he doesn't like" -- instead, I've said he's *cut off a story that was being debated further* -- which is true -- because he was satisfied with it as it fit his prog preconceptions -- which is also true. TRUST ME, if he had a bunch of tweets in his queue only criticizing Snowden, like Anna Appelbaum was, he'd be desperately looking for a counter-narrative (and that's how he ran Duns -- recognizing that he was a credible source as he had been a long-time critic of Snowden -- perfect!). Putin's mission was really accomplished with this one.

Well, yeah. Sure. We all get that. But in fact, you chose who to follow and you look for things that fit. And he admits that he only uses "what I find interesting or insightful". And that's the problem. There's no curiosity at the Times to go further on Snowden, and to approach these kinds of stunts with a more weathered eye. He ran the Guardian piece and its praise from Duns and Soldatov because it rescued the situation of the previous day where Snowden largely looked bad even to some former supporters.

MacKey could not have missed Tom Nichols and many others confronting Duns. It produced thousands of tweets -- more than I've ever seen on Twitter. Perhaps Mackey doesn't know that Tom Nichols, a professor at the Navy College vocal in his criticism of Snowden, and John Schindler, a professor also at the college and former NSA, also vocal in criticism, even exist. But I find that hard to believe. Even the liberal media does know that these thoughtful and credible critics exist and quote them.

Once I actually send him the links, I'd expect MacKey either not to answer, because he hates debates (many journalists, especially at the Times, where they think they are gods, hate debate and usually try to turn it into a factology quarrel in which they try to impugn the abilities or intelligence of their critics). I'd expect him if he answered again to say, either he didn't realize there was a storm of debate *15 minutes* after the last tweet he posted from Dun (and likely earlier, because probably some people instantly responded to Duns in bewilderment at his change of tune). Or I'd expect him to give a kiss-off like, thanks, didn't see it, bye.

By contrast, the Snowden TV story had 115 comments before being closed off. A Krugman column the Times loves can have thousands of comments. The Times is hugely biased and uneven in their comment cut-off policy, especially on tech hacker stories which I've fought for years -- the people doing the monitoring tend to cut off anything they can quickly, because they are overworked and have too much to cover, so they like closing windows. They also are happier to see debate stay in their corner and not challenge their own views.

So, instead of admitting that he just didn't see - or couldn't care about -- a raging debate that happened in *the whole hour after the last tweet he was using in his post* -- this is what I get -- impugning of reason and claims of falsehood when I've send him numerous links and when anyone can see the date and time stamps on his blog and anyone can see that a huge debate was underway he was not covering.

I've spent time documenting all this because I think it's important to illustrate the classic maneuvers of "progressive" NYT journalists in particular, and "progressives" in general in dealing with their critics -- they resort to name-calling, impugning of intellect, claims of falsehood, and factology -- specious and literalist invocation of facts. If you try to use that method on them -- pointing out that Duns' last tweet was time-stamped 3:47, Tom Nichols began strenuously debating him at 4:00 pm with loads of others, and MacKey's own blog was posted 4:42 pm -- that doesn't count. That is simply ignored or explained away (and even I can concede that while writing a post, you may miss something that comes while you're doing that).

But WHEN it is pointed out to you that you cut off a debate that ensued and didn't reflect it, why can't you admit it? Or say "I'll take a look". Why say the messenger got their facts wrong or worse, is lying -- when in fact everything points to the reality that you ducked out of debate at the comfort level it had for you, with the opinions you shared?

To my surprise, an account named @CoffeeBrue came alone and RT'd this. Clearly it's an account that just automatically looks for mentions of coffee and RTs them -- or even if "conscious" and not automatic as in "using a bot," it is just stupidly RTing or liking mentions without reading them. No one would RT a thing like this as an advertising account promoting a brand of coffee and coffee in general UNLESS they were doing this automatically and stupidly.

Clearly guilty, when I complained, this account removed their RT. Then, like so many arrogant asses on Twitter, they couldn't simply apologize for their THOUGHTLESSNESS getting in the middle of a tweet about someone who died, instead, they had to try to switch the blame to me and exonerate themselves. SO typical!

Um, let's start with the uncivility in inappropriately liking/RTing a "coffee mention" even if it is about someone's death!!! I don't believe he wanted to learn more about my friend's death any more than I believe in the tooth fairy. The energy put into distracting from what was clearly @CoffeeBrue's blame to start lets me know that. He adds insult to injury with this concoction -- then pretends this is about "learning" (!) Imagine, he claims even he "accidentally" unliked it although in fact that occurred after I challenged him. He tries to distract with the usual geeky online literalism of claiming I was talking about literally "following" him but as I wrote, it's about FOLLOWING ANY MENTION, not an account -- I didn't say he followed my account, and that's NOT what it is about, obviously. This is a good expose of the pernicious and nasty thinking of the geeks/online kids today.

In short, instead of saying "I'm sorry" and un-RTing and leaving it at that, this idiot has to run the entire gambit of self-justifying bullshit -- distracting about a fake literalism of something I supposedly said "wrong" about "following" (I didn't); distracting from the main point of the interchange (his inappropriate RT or like); his back-tracking and dropping those distractions and making a completely disingenuous claim about interest in my friend's life (please, we're not children here); more distraction claiming the problem is my alleged "incivility" or "ranting" instead of HIS REFUSAL TO APOLOGIZe or indeed simply say nothing. This deeply duplicitious, distracting, self-justifying, arrogant type is really the "New Man" of the Internet, it's really very common to find all these characteristics in an online argument. The Internet enables this duplicity and distraction but ultimately people themselves are to blame for their insincere thoughtlessness and shirking of responsibility -- as @CoffeeBrue is.